Menuts Rosa

streets of spain

May 4th, 2014

This weekend the Southbank hosted a Streets of Spain food and drink fiesta,

vidal pons

sponsored by Campo Viejo Rioja.

menuts rosa barcelona

I was delighted to see that about 16 stalls had come from la Boqueria in Barcelona,

menuts rosa london

including one of my favourite stalls, Menuts Rosa.

rosa i francisca gabaldà

The Gabaldà family have run Menuts Rosa for four generations – they have been selling offal in la Boqueria since 1900.

pota tallada

Back in Cataluña  Rosa and Francisca sell fresh meat products like the above,

vacuum packed tripe

but they also do a line of traditional home made stews in vacuum packs, which can be heated up and served within 5 minutes or so. This is what they’d brought with them to promote in London.

rosa

Alongside the packets of food, they were selling bowls of hot

riñones

kidneys,

tripe

tripe and cap i pota (below).

cap i pota

I’d been hoping they’d have cap i pota – my favourite Catalan stew, typically made by cooking calf’s head and feet in lard, olive oil and sherry, with chilli pepper, red pepper and samfaina for several hours until tender. It’s a thick, meaty, unctuous dish that makes your lips stick together. I’ll have to make this myself the next time I’m in Barcelona.

The weather had turned cold and Menut Rosa’s hot food at £3.50 a bowl was perfect to warm people up – it was also cheaper than most of the other food on offer. I bought a bowl of cap i pota and chatted to Rosa and her mum about buying a veal penis (from their stall in Barcelona) and making a stew with instructions given to me by one of their South American employees (Veal Penis Stew recipe). Apparently animal penis is good for virility and is similarly popular in China – Chinese Stag Soup recipe.

tongue and pistachio

I went home with some vacuum packed tongue and pistachios – i llengua amb festucs.

jamón y chorizo

Before leaving I had a good look around the other traders in the market too, above is Canasaladeries J Farres who specialise in pork and cured meat

paella

and came across an interesting chicken paella at Jamón Jamón (from Portobello Road), It looked like a traditional Valencian recipe with white beans and rosemary. I read somewhere that you use rosemary in the absence of snails, but never the two together, because snails are fed rosemary and are therefore pre flavoured.

gambas

I believe these beautiful prawns were going on top…

The Streets of Spain fiesta continues tomorrow (May 5th) from 12 – 8pm.

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